Discussion on Immigration Reform with Sofia Campos and Kent Wong

Please join MIT Community Innovators Lab and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning's Students of Color Committee for a discussion on immigration with Sofia Campos, organizer with United We Dream (http://unitedwedream.org/about/our-missions-goals/), the largest immigrant youth-led reform campaign, and Kent Wong, Director of UCLA's Center for Labor Research and Education.

Book Talk: "Purging the Poorest"

Professor Larry Vale will give a talk on his forthcoming book, Purging the Poorest: Public Housing and the Design Politics of Twice-Cleared Communities.

The building and management of public housing is often seen as a signal failure of American public policy, but this is a vastly oversimplified view. In Purging the Poorest, Lawrence J. Vale offers a new narrative of the seventy-five-year struggle to house the “deserving poor.”

Transportation as A Language

Submitted by Jinhua Zhao on Tue, 04/02/2013 - 12:38am

Is travel simply a mandane daily chore? Or may it convery a higher meaning? Surveying aspects of one's life: dining, clothing, sheltering and travelling, all have an element of utility and an element of vanity. In contrast to its usual technical perception, we see transportation as a rich language to describe a personcharacterize a city and understand an institution.

Student Research

Submitted by Jinhua Zhao on Sun, 03/31/2013 - 11:58am

I very much enjoy working with students in various forms: RA, theses, directed studies, term projects, co-authoring papers, conference presentations, etc. Here is a list of those who I've had the pleasure to work with.

Urbanizing China

Submitted by Jinhua Zhao on Sat, 03/30/2013 - 3:22am

China urbanized 370 million people in past 30 years and is poised to urbanize another 300 million in the next three decades. We aim to examine what will distinguish the next 30 years from the past. Below are a few angles to start the inquiry:

  • Urbanization Out of Sync

China’s urbanization is immense and rapid but largely out of sync. To what extent is it the case between people and land, between economy and environment, between financing and urban form, and between locals and migrants?

Ideas/working papers: 

Coming Home to New Orleans

Submitted by Eran Ben-Joseph on Sat, 03/23/2013 - 7:49am

Karl Seidman new book, Coming Home to New Orleans, documents grassroots rebuilding efforts in New Orleans neighborhoods after hurricane Katrina, and draws lessons on their contribution to the post-disaster recovery of cities.    The book summarizes Katrina's impact and the planning and public sector recovery policies that set the context for neighborhood recovery and presents and analyzes rebuilding for six New Orleans neighborhoods.

Smart Device and Travel Time Use

Submitted by Jinhua Zhao on Fri, 03/22/2013 - 11:11pm

This research investigates the usage of smart devices and time at bus stops and on buses in Vancouver, Canada. Using passive observations and self-reported surveys mainly from college students, the majority of passengers were found to use their travel time actively. Most of the observed active activities are associated with the usage of smart devices. However, while the possession of smart devices is prevalent, less than one third of passengers used them during travel.

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